A GP dismissed my husband's dizzy spells as vertigo... four months later he ... trends now
Bob Deller was a fit and healthy grandfather, who spent his time gardening, playing golf and going to yoga when he developed a nagging headache and started feeling dizzy last summer.
His GP initially told him it was vertigo, a common condition that affects balance and generally improves on its own.
But it was the beginning of a rapid deterioration that swiftly robbed the 75-year-old of his ability to talk and walk – and led to his death only four months later.
Shortly before Bob died in December, doctors discovered the keen drummer had the ‘one-in-a-million’ fatal brain condition Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
‘When he first complained of headaches and dizziness, I wasn’t too worried as the GP said it would improve,’ says his widow Maggie, 75, a retired nurse who lives near Sevenoaks, Kent.
Bob Deller, pictured, was a healthy grandfather who spent his time playing golf, gardening and going to yoga before he started feeling dizzy last summer
‘He had always worried about his health, so was very active. He walked our dogs for two hours every day, he never smoked or drank alcohol. But he went downhill so fast, it was so shocking. Within a few weeks he started shuffling when he walked, slurring his words and became more and more confused.’
For many, CJD is best known as the human form of so-called ‘mad cow’ disease which came to prominence in the 1990s.
But the neurological disease comes in four types, only one of which – called variant CJD – is associated with eating infected beef. Bob, a retired procurement officer, had a version called spontaneous CJD, which strikes about 130 people a year in the UK and whose cause is unknown.
In CJD, a common protein called a prion, which sits on the surface of brain cells and is believed to carry messages between them, malfunctions.
This seems to start a cascade that makes other prion proteins malfunction, leading to brain cells dying. The disease causes holes to develop in the brain, which triggers mental degeneration and, ultimately, death. It is not known what prompts this process to start in spontaneous CJD, which on average leads to death four months after symptoms start.
A blood sample for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. There are no treatment options for the illness
When Bob started to deteriorate, Maggie made an appointment with a private neurologist. ‘When we first went to see him in August, Bob was using a walking stick,’ says Maggie, who was married to Bob for 47 years.
